Married at 13: Uncover the Story of Vietnamese Girls Being Sold as Child Brides in China

· Married at 13: Uncover the Story of Vietnamese Girls Being Sold as Child Brides in China ·

Vietnamese girls were rescued from being sold as child brides. Girls as young as 13 were smuggled across the Chinese border which is known as one of the hunting grounds for the alleged human trafficking.

According to CNN, Vietnamese girls as young as 13 years old were sold as child brides. Chinese men treat these girls as valuable commodities as they are in scarcity. China has a one-child policy, and boys are highly preferred.

Buying a child bride comes with a price as it can be a form of luxury in China. Chinese men are often pressured to marry at a certain age, thus purchasing their bride can save them a lot of money.

"It costs a very huge amount of money for normal Chinese man to get married to a Chinese woman," explained Ha Thi Van Khanh, national project coordinator for the U.N. told CNN. "Traditionally, Chinese men wishing to marry local women are expected to pay for an elaborate banquet and to have purchased a new home to live in after the wedding. This is why they try to import women from neighboring countries, including Vietnam."

Some brides were drugged as they were bring trafficked. If they would hesitate, they will be tortured; deprived of food and badly beaten. The child bride trafficking in China has been around for years.

BBC featured one of China's child bride story, wherein she married at the age of 16. The marriage of two 16 year old spared outrageous comments as the legal age for Chinese couple to get married is 20 for women to 22 for men.

Their marriage gathered serious back-lashed as most suggest that they didn't know what they're doing. The bride, Xiaowu told Nanguo Zaobao that she and her husband got full support from her family. The couple also stated that getting married was a duty to their family and society as they hope for the public to understand their situation.

The child bride taboo is not just rampant in China as it is also common in India. Daily Mail released a heartbreaking footage of a child bride being forced to marry boys secretly. In UNICEF's statistics, India leads 33 percent of the total count of the world's child bride population.